San Cisco are growing up. When Junkee catches up with the Western Australian trio (made up of lead singer/guitarist/keyboardist Jordi Davieson, drummer/vocalist Scarlett Stevens and guitarist/vocalist Josh Biondillo), they’re preparing for the release of their new album, Under the Light, and they’re in a reflective mood.
2024 marks 15 years since the band first formed, and things have changed a lot since the early days. “On tour, we’re having group gym sessions at the hotel,” Jordi says. “That’s how bad it’s getting, Josh will run us through a little session that he’s put together. And then we usually have a little sauna or something. It’s all about wellness.”
Aging gracefully is on the band’s mind, and 2024 is shaping up to be a pivotal year. They marked Under the Light’s release with a mini-tour around Australia, playing a quartet of acoustic shows at record stores in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth before setting off to the UK and Europe. For a band that’s five albums deep, going through the motions can become the norm — but they’re determined to not let these days pass them by without acknowledgement. Scarlett says, “I think your 20s, we always say this, but you kind of take them for granted, and then in your 30s, I feel like you’re more grateful for every small win and the smaller moments and moments with friends and loved ones.” She adds, “I don’t know if that’s just with getting older or getting wiser, or what, not to sound like a mushy person,” before catching herself. “There’s nothing wrong with being a mushy person. I don’t know. Celebrate small wins!”
Under the Light sees the band take their sound in new directions. By far their most dancefloor-ready album yet, the band worked closely with Pond drummer James Ireland, who co-wrote and co-produced the album. His influence can be best heard on tracks like ‘Consequence’, ‘Under the Light’ and the UKG-inspired ‘Honeycomb’, a trio of tracks that underpin this new, more vivacious era of San Cisco. “Production-wise, we had the means to take it in that direction, whereas in the past, we didn’t really have that kind of knowledge behind us,” Scarlett says.
James’ influence extends far beyond what can be heard on the record — Jordi explains that “for the first time ever, we weren’t really allowed to listen to reference tracks. James wouldn’t let us do it!” The band does point to Robbie Williams (and, somewhat self-deprecatingly, suggest it’s a lofty comparison), but they say that while in the past they have looked to other music for inspiration, they’ve always been able to stick true to their strengths as musicians. “You’re always gonna sound like San Cisco at the end of the day. It doesn’t take you too far away from your sense of self as a band,” Jordi says. “It always lands in San Cisco land somehow,” Josh adds.
Having another force in the room when writing and recording with the band isn’t a new phenomenon, so James’ presence was a natural fit. “I think we’ve always had another voice,” Jordi says. “Our last producer who we’d written everything and recorded everything with, Steven Schram, he had just as much weight in what we were doing as a fourth band member. We’ve always had a producer that we’ve worked with.” Steven has worked on every San Cisco release bar Under the Light, and co-produced 2020’s Between You and Me alongside both the band and James Ireland.
Under the Light continues on thematically from Between You and Me, which Scarlett says “ushered in a new era of San Cisco”. Between You and Me sees the band reflect on unrequited love on slow-burning opener ‘Skin’, while the psychedelic ‘Alone’ discusses a break-up with a formative lover. Relationships have been a topic of discussion for much of the band’s discography, but they’re conscious of keeping things fresh, and not relying too heavily on fan-service.
“The fans that we had when we were younger, they’ve grown up with us. I think we were just genuinely ourselves then,” Jordi says. “As long as we keep doing that, those fans are going to keep liking what we’re doing. As long as we’re trying to not be someone or something we’re not, then you’re going to succeed. Maybe. I think overthinking it more than that would just make you go a bit crazy, trying to preempt what they’re going to want to hear. You have to focus on what you want to say, in a well-written way, and that should connect.”
Under the Light discusses both relationships and the need to live in the now, themes that will connect with long-term and new fans. On Under the Light’s title track, Jordi sings, “Oh, don’t worry ’bout tomorrow, we’ve got tonight,” while on ‘High’, he asks, “Yeah, you’re on my mind all the time/I don’t really care about tomorrow/How could I when I feel this way?” Looking back on the writing process, the band says they’re more aware of themselves and the world around them when they’re writing now — which makes opening up more difficult. “I feel like I found it easier when we were really young because you just wouldn’t think about it,” Jordi says.
“You’d just be like, ‘This is how I’m feeling right now, and I’m gonna sing a song about it.’ Whereas now, you think about a lot more things because you’re getting older. But I think that softness and accepting and understanding all the other ways that people feel and how things come about is one of the themes of the record. It’s something that I think you become more aware of and think of more as you spend more time on the planet.”
The band wrote Under the Light in both the studio and at home, allowing loved ones to provide real-time feedback. This proved to be somewhat of a double-edged sword, though. “Everyone has a different favorite song or a different idea of what a video clip should look like, or how the album should look,” Scarlett says. “It was kind of difficult to navigate this time around, also [with] like the changing music landscape, and one way of doing things on another album, it’s hard to know if that’s the right thing to do now. I think in that sense, it felt really noisy and hard to know what to do.”
The solution? Looking internally, which the band says is the secret to their success. “We’ve shared the same drive and vision the whole way and it’s been lucky that we’re three people who have met and been able to do that,“ Jordi says. “It’s just like anything you do for a long time. There are gonna be ups and downs and you’re gonna have to do a lot of communicating and there are gonna be some really shit times and there are some really good times that make it all worth it.”
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing for the band this year — back in January, they were forced to cancel their American tour, while they were booked for the now-cancelled Groovin The Moo festival run. In a statement announcing the tour cancellation, the band wrote, “Despite painstaking preparations and fine tuning with our team, our projections have been met with the stark reality of the current state of the North American touring climate with unpredictable and unachievable elevated costs across the board. We attempted to exercise every avenue and angle but could not do so without compromising on delivering the best show possible, and not without taking a heavy emotional and financial toll on ourselves.”
While international superstars like Taylor Swift, P!nk and Fred again.. have been able to pull off ambitious Australian tours with ease, the reality isn’t the same for a lot of artists. “There’s so much music coming out and so many great acts. And it’s not a flooded market, but there are so many great options out there for people to go watch,” Jordi says. “And you can’t afford to go watch all of them. Even putting on a tour is expensive, but living life and going to two concerts a weekend, it’s just not financially viable for a lot of people.”
The past 15 years have seen San Cisco’s sound morph and evolve. They’ve moved on from the jangly indie-pop upstarts that created tracks like ‘Awkward’ and ‘Fred Astaire’, becoming adept at conquering any sound they put their mind to. On Under the Light, the band are at their most versatile, pairing raucous guitar riffs and driving drum beats with some of their most nuanced yet relatable lyricism yet. In a live setting, (relatively) new blood has shaken things up in the world of San Cisco. The band says that touring bassist Mitchell Benson, who’s been playing with the band since 2019, has helped them see touring through a new lens. “He still brings that froth level, that excitement to it all,” Jordi says. “We’re all old and crusty, and just like ‘Oh, I can’t really be bothered doing that.’ And he’s like, ‘Mate, we’re we’re in Melbourne. We should go here!’”
When asked what they want out of 2024, there are a couple of common themes. “It’s already starting to feel like it’s gonna be a different year of touring for me, maybe a little bit more engaged and present in the whole thing. And I’d like to start making some new music now as well,” Jordi says. Scarlett concurs, saying, “Going back to where music’s at the moment, it feels like you can’t really take those moments for granted. The band’s also keen to lock in some festival dates. “We were kind of robbed of the Groovin The Moo tour, and doing a really good festival run is something that I’d absolutely love to do, and see how the new music is landing with everybody on a scale like that,” Josh says. On a personal note, they’re looking to embrace their green thumbs. “I really want to get stuck into my house, my garden. I want to become good at gardening,” Scarlett says. Jordi adds, “I want to clean my shed. My shed’s an absolute mess. And I want to get my veggie garden popping again.”
San Cisco’s new album Under The Light is out now.
Ben Madden is a Melbourne-based music writer and Junkee’s Music Editorial Specialist. You can follow him on Twitter at @benmaddenwriter and Instagram at @benmaddenwriter, as well as keep up with his Sucks column here.
Image: Olivia Senior